Universities told to optimize research grants
KOTA KINABALU: Universities have to learn to optimize their research grants amid decreasing financial resources as researchers would no longer receive huge grants.
Deputy director-general of Higher Education at the Ministry of Education (MOE), Professor Dr Noor Azizi bin Is mail, said the ministry had been fighting hard for universities to obtain research grants from the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) and the MOE had tried to secure as much research grants it could in the upcoming national budget.
“Nonetheless, it goes back to how we optimize decreasing resources,” he said during an academia talk organized by the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Academic Staff Association here yesterday.
Dr Noor Azizi said the MOE had received RM1.6 million research grant from the Malaysian Research Assessment Instrument (MyRA).
“I have made it a policy to offer research grants to a maximum of RM5,000 for social science and RM20,000 for science and technology. We have been pampered all these while with huge research grants. We wanted to present our (research) papers overseas in beautiful places,” he said.
Dr Noor Azizi said he used to produce good research with a budget of between RM3,000 to RM5,000, and had his research published in reputable journals.
“The most I received was RM30,000 in research grant. We need to learn to do research with small amount of money,” he said.
On another note, Dr Noor Azizi stressed on the need to constantly update curricula and for universities to cooperate with industries to ensure their graduates would meet current and future demands.